Time to kill the CPM: a case for outcome-based ads

The CPM—the humble cost-per-thousand-impressions—has become one of the most enduring and unquestioned currencies in digital media. It governs programmatic revenue, underpins direct deals, and shapes how publishers talk about audience value. But the longer it survives, the more its limitations become apparent.

The CPM measures exposure, not impact. It rewards volume, not intent. And in a fragmented, post-cookie landscape where advertisers demand measurable results and readers demand trust, its utility is rapidly diminishing. The media world has changed. The metric hasn’t.

What’s needed now is not just a new pricing model. It’s a new philosophical starting point: outcomes over impressions.

The CPM’s structural blind spot

CPM-based advertising assumes that a thousand people seeing an ad is inherently valuable. But that assumption has never been weaker. Attention is scarce, ad blindness is high, and banner positions—especially below the fold—often deliver negligible real-world results.

For publishers, this model rewards traffic regardless of context. A 200-word commodity story that goes viral may generate more ad revenue than a carefully crafted longform piece that deeply engages a niche audience. The result is a perverse incentive structure—one that prioritises scale over quality, and pageviews over purpose.

Meanwhile, advertisers are increasingly aware that not all impressions are equal. They want clicks, leads, conversions, brand lift—something tangible. A high CPM on a high-traffic site means little if it doesn’t move the needle. And increasingly, it doesn’t.

Why outcomes offer a better alignment of incentives

Outcome-based models, by contrast, reward performance. This could take many forms:

• Cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-lead (CPL)

• Sponsored content measured by time-on-page or scroll depth

• Newsletter sponsorships tied to open rates or click-throughs

• Branded content assessed by engagement benchmarks or assisted conversions

Each of these aligns the interests of the advertiser, the publisher, and the audience more closely. Advertisers pay for results. Publishers focus on quality and context. Readers are presented with content that feels less like wallpaper and more like information.

Crucially, outcomes force a reevaluation of where the real value in media lies—not in sheer exposure, but in connection and effect.

Why now is the right time to shift

Several factors make this the ideal moment to challenge the CPM orthodoxy:

• Third-party cookies are vanishing, eroding the logic behind audience-based targeting and reducing the efficacy of broad-reach campaigns.

• Advertisers are moving budget toward performance marketing, demanding clear ROI rather than vague visibility metrics.

• Email, podcasting, and niche media channels are thriving, offering better first-party data, deeper user trust, and more accurate engagement signals.

• Smaller publishers are increasingly attractive, not because they deliver scale, but because they deliver relevance and specificity—key ingredients for outcome-based partnerships.

The ground is shifting. Holding onto CPM as the default pricing metric is like pricing cars by how often people walk past them on a lot, rather than whether they buy one and drive away.

What outcome-based advertising requires

To make this shift work, publishers need to invest—not just in sales strategy, but in infrastructure:

• Better analytics and attribution to track what actually happens after a reader sees or clicks an ad

• Stronger partnerships with advertisers to define what “success” means for each campaign

• Editorial-advertising collaboration, especially in sponsored content, to ensure quality, tone, and performance align

• A cultural shift away from chasing raw traffic, and toward maximising the impact of the traffic you already have

This transition won’t be universal or immediate. CPM will persist in programmatic and remnant inventory. But for direct deals, newsletters, podcasts, and native formats, outcome-based pricing should become the rule—not the exception.

Rethinking value in publishing

Killing the CPM doesn’t mean devaluing reach. It means redefining what reach is for. It means accepting that visibility is only valuable if it leads to something—an action, a decision, a response.

For too long, publishers have priced content based on proximity, not performance. They’ve accepted a metric designed for display networks, not trusted media brands. Outcome-based models offer a way to regain control—not just of pricing, but of narrative. They let publishers say to advertisers: “We won’t just show your message. We’ll make sure it works.”

And in an era of shrinking margins and rising scrutiny, that may be the most valuable message of all.